The first night after a Hatching was invariably a sleepless one for a Weyrlingmaster. And the next, and the one after that. Tonight was the fourth, but if D'sair was lucky the worst of the night-time interruptions would be over with before the month was out, and he'd finally be able to get some decent sleep again. Yawning, D'sair rolled up and off his bed, and picked up his trousers from the floor. He didn't bother with his boots. Most late-night problems could be resolved without leaving the barracks, and bare feet were far quieter than booted ones. Glow-basket in hand, he left his quarters and made his way towards the cavern that housed the youngest of the weyrlings. Worse than babies, weyrlings were. So what if the dragonets didn't wake and scream and shit themselves all night long, not like human infants did. No, they saved all that for their riders. And it didn't seem to matter what he tried, from one clutch to the next. There would always be at least one weyrling pair who persisted in making his life miserable for as long as humanly possible.

Inside his head, Kanarath gave the equivalent of a mental shrug. They'll learn, and then they'll forget. Or they won't learn, and then they'll-

Stop it, Kan! D'sair snapped. Faranth, they weren't even a sevenday old yet: far too young for him to start worrying himself sick about their futures. I know as well as you do what'll happen if they don't learn. Knowing's bad enough. There's no need to remind me all the time.

Sighing, he raised his glow-basket a little higher. He'd heard whimpering from out in the hallway – not all that loud, but unmistakable for what it was – but the noise had ceased before he'd had a chance to figure out which of the twenty-nine riders in the room was responsible for it. If you want to be helpful, you could at least tell me which of them's upset.

Colzenth's boy, Kanarath answered. His bed is wet.

Faranth, him again? D'sair stifled a groan. At least that scenario was far more easily managed than some of the alternatives were.

“H'sal?” he whispered as reached the boy's cot. “H'sal? I know you're awake.” He placed a hand on the lad's shoulder and gave it a slight shake. Beneath the fabric of his nightshirt, H'sal's body was tense. “You can't possibly be comfortable like that, and it'll only get worse the longer you leave it. And then Colzenth will wake up. C'mon lad. Up you get.”

Mention of the boy's brown had exactly the desired effect. H'sal opened his eyes. Looking slightly panicked, his first action was to turn and check on his dragon. Then, reassured that the brown was still sleeping soundly, he squeezed his eyelids tightly shut again. “Harosal,” he whispered.

“No, boy, not any more,” D'sair said. It was early days, and he might yet be proved wrong...but there was a thread of fear in his guts now, small and twisting and growing, burrowing in to stay. “You're H'sal now. H'sal the dragonrider.” Colzenth's H'sal, he might have added, if he hadn't been too afraid of being proved right. “Go on, into the washroom with you, and get yourself cleaned up. I'll deal with this.”

He waited for the boy's shadow to disappear down the tunnel, then scooped up the soiled bedding by the corners and dumped it outside with the oil- and blood-stained clothes and the rest of the laundry. Working as quickly and quietly as he could, he fetched some fresh bedding and set H'sal's cot to rights again, keeping one ear open all the while for any change in the gentle huffing of Colzenth's breathing.

The dragon didn't stir.

Nor did H'sal, once he was safely back in his bed and beneath a fresh layer of fleece. D'sair watched him for several minutes, lying there stiff and still as a corpse, before turning back to his own quarters with a sigh. Colzenth and the other dragonets might manage to sleep through until their hungry bellies woke them shortly before dawn, but he doubted that H'sal would sleep at all. He had similar doubts about himself. When he finally did drop off again, long after the watch had changed, his dreams were predictably disturbing.

He'd been Weyrlingmaster more than long enough to recognise the signs.

D'sair ran his hands steadily down the side of the brown dragon's flank. He passed over the ticklish spot that seemed to set nine out of ten dragons twitching, but Colzenth didn't move a muscle. The hide beneath his fingers felt smooth and soft and warm, exactly as a dragon's should, but these were the easiest parts to tend. Please ask him if he itches anywhere, Kanarath.

I don't itch.

D'sair pulled his hands away sharply. It wasn't the clarity of H'sal's brown's voice in his mind that had startled him; it was the fact that the dragon had obviously lied.

I concur, Kanarath thought softly. Shall I...

No. Let me speak to H'sal first. After I'm done checking Colzenth over. D'sair resumed his checks. He found the first patch of noticeably dry and flaking skin high up on the dragon's near-side, just above the juncture of wing and body. The first crack appeared at the base of the fifth dorsal ridge; cracks, from a dragon who'd never yet felt the cold of between! He found several more patches of over-dry skin running down the brown's tail, and signs of an incipient second crack on the well-stretched skin of his belly. D'sair's assistant had carried out the last thorough checks for this clutch, a little over a sevenday ago. It was possible that he might have missed the signs at the time, but D'sair very much doubted it. No, this had happened in the interim...and it took a lot of neglect for a dragon's condition to worsen as swiftly as that.

He slapped Colzenth lightly on the neck, then backed away thoughtfully, eyeing the dragon up. The dragon's straps were well made and measured to perfection, and he couldn't fault H'sal's work in ground drills, or his diligence with weyrling chores. His relationships with the other weyrlings were nothing out of the ordinary – he had a few close friends, and was on good terms with the rest of them. He wasn't especially smart, but nor was he stupid, or a bully; he had, in fact, done a good job of defusing more than one awkward scene in the barracks. Perfect brownrider material, one might think.

“Yara, stop it!”

Stifling a groan, D'sair turned on the spot. N'say was over-sensitive even for a greenrider, but shells, he couldn't make a bigger target of himself if he walked out naked into Threadfall! Yara's teasing was mild enough, but N'say seemed incapable of not taking it all deathly seriously. It might even end up being fatal if he didn't pull himself together over it all soon! “What seems to be the problem, weyrlings?”

“I only said that-”

“Enough,” D'sair said, cutting Yara short before she could finish. “I assume it's the same kind of thing you were on about at breakfast? Yes?”

“Yes, sir,” the young woman admitted smoothly, without the slightest bit of contrition. “But only about how much fun Vyrangth and I will have, not about N'say! Who'd want their dragon to catch a green whose rider's as frigid as between anyway?”

From the other side of the group, G'lesso smirked cruelly at her. “Better than one who-”

“ENOUGH!” D'sair took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing his angry impatience to subside. A small part of it was down to the mess Yara was making of N'say, and most of the rest was caused by H'sal's appalling incompetence...but that didn't account for everything. Kanarath... you are still listening in on the dragons' emotions, aren't you?

Of course I am. They only hatched a month after Turnover.

Almost eight months ago. Eight months was a little on the young side for a green to rise for the first time, but it wasn't completely unheard of. “Yara, unless you want me to make Vyrangth's flight into a lesson for your fellow weyrlings, I suggest you drop the subject between. Two laps around the bowl please...and the rest of you can run one lap as well.”

Except H'sal? Kanarath prompted.

Exactly, Kan.

D'sair waited until the other weyrlings were out of earshot, then beckoned H'sal over. “Colzenth told me that he didn't have any itches. Why would he do that, H'sal?”

The young brownrider scuffed at the dirt beneath his boot. “I don't... I don't...” He fell into a short, awkward silence, breaking it a few seconds later by bursting into noisy tears. “I can't help it! I just can't feel him right!” he gasped out between sobs.

D'sair looked back over his shoulder towards Colzenth. The brown's eyes were whirling a pale and inscrutable green, seeming completely unaware – or perhaps uncaring – of his rider's distress. Well, there was an easy way to fix that. A pity that it wouldn't work on the rest of the boy's problems. Ready, Kan?

Ready.

D'sair drew back his hand, then punched H'sal hard in the belly.

Colzenth was up on his feet in a flash, eyes reddening just as fast, but Kanarath had a firm hold of the brown's mind and the young dragon stayed rooted to the spot. D'sair let H'sal wheeze his way back upright again before speaking. “You felt him feel that, didn't you?”

H'sal nodded mutely.

“So who's hiding from who, H'sal? I thought we'd already put a stop to you blocking yourself from him, but he's only gone and learned the knack from you instead, hasn't he?”

“I didn't mean to!” the lad protested.

“No? Well what did you expect him to do when all he ever hears, day in and day out, is that his rider doesn't deserve him, that his rider isn't good enough, that he should've chosen someone else?”

“How did-”

“Faranth, anyone would think you didn't want to be a dragonrider! That he doesn't know what you need better than you know yourself. What do you think he'll do, if there ever comes a day that he agrees with you? What'll happen then?” D'sair could feel the cold chill of memory running through him, like the dark pit of between that all dragons died in, those that were riderless and those that might as well have been. “He has to believe you're wrong. That you're doing right by him, whether you are or not – and you're not, by the way – and that you do love him, deep inside, however much you intentionally blind yourself to what he means to you. Now get over there and apologise to your dragon. And you'd sharding better convince him that you mean it!”

That was well said, D'sair, Kanarath told him as H'sal stumbled away. Very convincing, I thought. You really sounded like you cared.

D'sair choked out a laugh. Yeah, Kan. I care. You of all dragons should know that.

Vyrangth, D'sair.

D'sair raised his eyes from his plate just in time to see the green's rider stumbling past in a headlong rush for the weyrbowl. Well, it's about sharding time! Yara's attitude had become so bad that D'sair would have seriously considered revoking the unwritten rules regarding weyrling celibacy, had she not already broken them half a dozen times – that he knew of – in the last month alone. Who's looking interested, then?

Kanarath obligingly shared an image of the dragons gathering out in the weyrbowl. Pranath. Henth. Dillinith. Suoth. Gsilth. Noryinth.

A blue and a brown from two clutches before the one Vyrangth herself had hatched from, an older blue, a brown ridden by one of the girl's lovers, and two mature bronzes who ought to have known better. D'sair raised a brow at the last and speared another piece of tuber with his fork. They were all undercooked, again. Noryinth? I was under the impression that Yara had made it abundantly clear to L'mai that she wasn't the slightest bit interested?

I expect you're right, but Vyrangth made it equally clear to Noryinth that she was.

D'sair shook his head. Likely they'll both be disappointed then. Noryinth wasn't the only chasing bronze, but D'sair would place his marks on blue Dillinth outmanoeuvring the lot of them. Think we should call him away?

Why would we do that? Kanarath asked. Vyrangth's rider might think she prefers Suoth, and Vyrangth might think she wants Noryinth, but I doubt they'll be unhappy if Dillinth catches them. Or one of the others.

It's not Yara I'm worried about. The girl was weyrbred: she knew what was coming, and she'd deal with it properly, whatever the end result. No, it was the other green weyrlings from the clutch that concerned him there. Vyrangth's the first from this clutch, but she won't be the last, he reminded Kanarath. Gsilth lost out on the last three greens he chased, and now he's going for easy pickings. Sharding bronzes! He'll not stop if he's frustrated again today – which he will be – he'll just keep chasing until he catches one of 'em, and M'bessen won't care if the rider's got a cock or a **** until afterwards. Then he'll care. And so will I, because we both know it'll be N'say, sure as eggs hatch dragons. There was little challenge in catching a green on her maiden flight. Even less so, when the rider of the green concerned decided to fight what was happening, confusing his dragon and slowing her down.

Someone did. That was unavoidable, and only fractionally more certain than N'say's inevitable reaction to what was coming. D'sair had seen it all before, more times than he cared to remember. What was avoidable was what M'bessen would do afterwards, what he always did to reassert his perceptions of proper masculinity when Gsilth chased and caught the wrong greens. Someone has to catch her, Kanarath, but I'd far rather it wasn't them.

A full hour of straight flight had settled the weyrlings well enough, D'sair decided. They hadn't had an easy few days – this stage of between training, when theory was first put into practice, was invariably a very difficult and sombre time – but so far, this clutch had achieved far better results than average. Of the twenty-nine dragons who had clutched nine and a half months previously, nineteen had already made their first jumps between...and all but two of them had survived the experience. Zeniorth and Rassia had just got unlucky; something had distracted Zeniorth at exactly the wrong time, and that was simply that. Aldoth and Tr'bar's loss had come about differently. Weyr gossip might attribute their deaths to Tr'bar's overconfidence – weyrfolk were often generous in that respect – but D'sair himself knew better. Overconfidence would have been a far easier problem to solve than Tr'bar's real issue, and much easier to spot besides. No, Tr'bar hadn't died from overconfidence. Tr'bar had died from fear. He'd hidden it well...but notwell enough to stop it from seizing hold of his mind at the instant the darkness enveloped them, and nowhere near well enough to save himself or his dragon from a cold and silent death between.

Kanarath had felt it all happen, powerless to intervene. The best the brown had managed was to shield the other weyrlings from sensing what had gone wrong until it was all over and done with. It wasn't ideal, but a grieving weyrling was still capable of making their own jump successfully. A dragon riddled with another mind's dying fear could not. But as sad and tragically pointless as the deaths were, it was only to be expected that some weyrlings wouldn't survive long enough to reach the Fighting Wings. Four deaths was good for a clutch of this size. On that basis, some might even assume that this clutch of weyrlings was particularly astute, well-trained, and the dragons and riders perfectly suited to one another. Others – like D'sair himself, though he was careful to never let the weyrlings themselves get wind of it – would simply see it as a sign that the worst was yet to come.

Today, six more weyrling dragons and their riders would attempt their first jumps between. There were advantages and disadvantages to being amongst the last weyrlings of a clutch to do so. A few more days in which to practise building visuals, to draw on the confidence of those who'd gone before them, and to accept the reality of the friends who had vanished and would never be coming back. For some of the riders, the timing of this stage of their training had proved to be particularly bad. Yara had been close friends with Rassia and Tr'bar both, and had taken their deaths particularly hard. N'say might have been spared M'bessen's presence in his bed when Grenshath rose – and Faranth, the favours D'sair had had to call in to make certain of that! – but just as he'd predicted, the lad was still in turmoil over the whole messy experience. If D'sair had known in advance that the greens of that particular clutch would start rising as young as they had, he'd have tried to pace the rest of their training accordingly, leaving the challenge of between until after the greenriders had got past all of the mental conflicts driven by their dragons' new-found sexuality...but there was really no way of knowing whether the first green of a clutch would rise at eight months or eighteen, and he'd only have been able to shift this day by a month backwards or forwards at most. No, the weyrlings were dragonriders, and needed, and with Thread falling heavier than ever these past few turns the Weyr simply couldn't afford to coddle them. And as for H'sal...well, he seemed to have got the message, finally, but things still weren't yet right between the boy and his brown.

D'sair gave Kanarath a gentle slap on the dragon's neck. May as well get started.

Kanarath passed the message along, and a dozen lengths away the six greens settled into a rather sloppy and lopsided circle in the air. After he'd watched them make several circuits, D'sair decided that four of them were more or less where they were supposed to be, but Grenshath was far too close to Magrath's tail, and Vyrangth was completely out of position, almost level with Colzenth. It might be nerves, or...

They were trying to keep their riders from worrying. I've told them that concentrating on their visuals is a better thing to do. They won't do it again.

D'sair shook his head with a sigh. Let's stick with our original order. Magrath first. Call her over, and let's see what Famary's come up with.

The green peeled smoothly away from the weyrlings' formation and took up position off Kanarath's left wing. Magrath shows me Famary's visual, Kanarath said, sharing it with D'sair.

The details were all present and correct: the curve of the Weyr's rim; the carefully levelled ridge where the eyerock and the starstones sat; the blue dragon standing Watch-duty beside them. The tithe-road, snaking away from the tunnel that pierced the Weyr. And behind the Weyr itself, the other mountains of the range in all their snowcapped beauty. Looks good to me, D'sair sent back. How sturdy is it?

He sensed rather than felt directly the strong jab of pressure Kanarath sent against the green's mind. Magrath's visual wavered only slightly, and then even seemed to strengthen. They focus well, Kanarath said. Famary has a good eye for detail, and they're both appropriately confident.

I agree. D'sair turned to Famary, and yelled his customary final words of encouragement at her. “In your own time, rider,” he finished.

Famary nodded in acknowledgement, then reached down to hug her dragon about the neck. She was a good rider, lucky in how well she and Magrath matched each other. The green was one of the few in the clutch who hadn't risen to mate yet, but D'sair was confident that when she did it would only enhance the already exceptionally strong bond existing between dragon and rider. How do they feel? he asked Kanarath.

Nervous. Excited. Controlled. They go!

Girl and dragon vanished, almost before Kanarath's last words had registered with him. D'sair started his slow count backwards from six. At three, he felt the first hint of unease from his brown. What? he demanded in place of 'two'.

I'm not sure, Kanarath answered at one. Perhaps...

Is she back yet? At the Weyr?

Perhaps she has too good an eye for detail. Too strong a focus.

Kanarath, answer the sharding question! Are – they – out?

The brown's mind fell silent with concentration. I'm trying to see. Trying to find them, trying to follow them where their visual took them.

D'sair closed his eyes and grasped hold of Kanarath's memory of Famary's visual. The Weyr was right. The landscape, too. The sun in the sky was perfect for that hour of the day, but she hadn't been so foolish as to imagine the correct shadows over the Weyr, and the only dragon that stood out precisely was the dragon on watch-duty by the Starstones...a dragon whose watch duty would've ended at noon. There, D'sair told Kanarath, feeling sick to his stomach. It would be blue Filronth there now, not Rioth...and if Magrath had jumped with too clear a sense of the blue's identity....

And then the first of the weyrling dragons started to keen, Kanarath and the rest of them following barely a heartbeat behind. The terrible sound the dragons made didn't take long to die away, but by then D'sair had the young riders' shock and grief to deal with in its stead.

He had half a mind to postpone the rest of the day's training and take the whole lot of them back to the Weyr. He could start again with them all tomorrow, or later, bringing them back out here to live or die one by one, or all together in a group. No. Delaying now would only worsen matters. If it didn't seed doubts of their competence, one or another of them would simply try it for themselves, unsupervised, and likely die that way instead.

They need to go now, Kanarath agreed. They need to be flying, taking the task ahead of them seriously and without distractions, riders and dragons all together. They need to see it done right, and done right quickly. They already understand that not every weyrling survives their first jump between. What they don't need is to continue dwelling on Magrath's death now. Choose someone to send next. Quickly.

He'd planned on asking N'say and Grenshath to jump second, giving them the boost of another rider's success before them. He'd even told them as much before they'd all left the Weyr, trusting that Famary and Magrath would make it look easy. Pulling them out now wouldn't do them any favours...but asking them to go between now was arguably worse.

As ready as they'll ever be, Kanarath said, sharing the feel of the young green's mind with his rider. If we refuse them this chance, now, they won't do as well later. They wouldn't be so easily rid of our doubts.

No. No, you're right. Very well. D'sair raised his hand and beckoned the green pair away from the other weyrlings. Let's see their visual now.

Here. Adequate, I'd say...but they place most trust in the strongest parts of it, and it should get them safely back to the Weyr.

And that, really, was all that anyone could ask. More practise will hone it, smooth off the rougher edges. If they kept hold of it. If they survived.

He twisted his body to face N'say and Grenshath. “Ready?” he bellowed across the air at them, abandoning his usual speech in its entirety.

“Ready, sir!” N'say yelled back.

“Then make me proud, rider!”

Heart in his mouth and fresh tears pricking at his eyes, D'sair watched as Grenshath slipped into an easy glide. And then she was gone, and there was nothing to see but empty air, and nothing to do but wait.

Most of the time, he got it right. Horribly, terribly, tragically right.

But some of the time he got it wrong. Wonderfully wrong.

Sometimes, the riders he worried the most over would suddenly turn a corner, all the pieces of the whole finally falling into place. A dragon with persistent cracks and dry spots on his hide would be transformed to glowing health almost overnight. The halting flight of another pair, handicapped by a deep-seated lack of confidence in one another, would unexpectedly fall away, shrinking to nothing along with their shadows as they gloriously took to the sky, inspired by mutual love and trust to delighted, dizzying feats. And the constant welter of slipped thoughts, fragments of complaints and doubts and insecurities that had either missed their intended mark or had spun lose when a deliberate attempt to stifle them failed, would no longer echo through the barracks and into his and Kanarath's shared mind.

It was those moments, those successes, that were what made it all worth his while. Not the riders who flew like they'd hatched from eggs themselves, who didn't spare a second's thought for what their lives had become. It was the other ones that tore at his heart, the ones who did think, who loved and tried and struggled no less hard, but who also found themselves needing to make sense of no longer being autonomous individuals, not even within the bounds of their own skulls. Some of them couldn't manage it. And then they died between, or they lost their dragons to the confused and desperate throes of mating lusts, or to Threadfall. Sometimes they lost them inside a wineskin. One, D'sair's predecessor had once told him, had snapped completely and taken a pickaxe to his own skull. Out of a clutch of thirty-odd eggs, it was rare if less than half a dozen dragonpairs were lost at some point during their training. Everyone in the Weyr expected some weyrlings to be lost...but blaming those losses on simple misfortune or, worse, a lack of skill or effort or attention, was a lie they didn't deserve, and a grief that D'sair did his best to hide. He knew the signs, knew who needed watching. Knew better than to hope, but hoped nonetheless.

N'say and Grenshath were that Turn's surprise. D'sair couldn't hide his delight when the Weyrleader came to a halt behind N'say's chair and placed a hand on the young man's shoulder. The whole Weyr fell silent as I'yun uttered the greenrider's name, following it with the traditional words of invitation to fly in the fighting Wings. The first dragonpair of their clutch to graduate, chosen by the Weyrleader himself. There was no greater honour for a weyrling than that.

Five sevendays later, Grenshath was fatally scored. D'sair took it upon himself to hold N'say's hand while the fellis took effect, and then, after it was done, to reunite man and dragon between.

I love you too, D'sair replies. Go back to sleep. I'll be sober in the morning. Got a clutch about to hatch, gotta have my wits about me, right?

H'sal belches: a preposterously long, drawn-out reverberation that he follows with a high-pitched giggle. “Faranth!” he says. “Me, a Weyrlingmaster's Assistant? Still can't believe...”

“Had to be you!” D'sair insists, poking H'sal in the chest with a finger. He must have done it a bit too hard, because H'sal sways on the spot and collapses back into his chair with a thump. “No-one else would do! Gotta train you up proper before I can retire. Gotta make a Weyrlingmaster out of you. You need to know what to look for. You need to remember. Need your dragon to remind you.” D'sair goes round to the other side of the table and sits down, belatedly remembering to pull his chair back into place just in time to meet his rapidly descending arse. Kanarath doesn't say anything to him about it: a surprising omission if the dragon was still awake.
He isn't.

D'sair gives Kanarath's mind a light nudge, but his dragon doesn't rouse. Good. That means it's safe. Safe to do the unthinkable, to make his betrayal real. To make his betrayal matter. “You need to understand,” he tells the other brownrider. “You need to know the signs.”

D'sair drains his cup of wine and then pushes it aside, refusing H'sal's offer of a refill. There'll be plenty of time for that later. He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. He hasn't rehearsed what he's about to say at all – it wouldn't do for Kanarath to pick up on what he's about to do, before or after – but it's obvious where he needs to start.
Slowly, and with careful emphasis on each appalling word, he tells H'sal how it all began. “I... I was not meant to Impress.” An ugly fact, but a true one. “Kanarath wasn't even looking at me, he was heading for one of the other candidates entirely. Larsho. A friend of mine. He was sure the bronze was coming for him, didn't listen to anything the rest of us said when it became obvious that Gsilth wasn't interested. I don't think he ever really understood at all, not even when Gsilth was past him and half his body's blood was already on the Sands. Maybe he could feel Kanarath. Kanarath could certainly feel him. Couldn't get to him in time, and I...”

He's fairly certain that it was his grief for his friend that had attracted Kanarath to him in the first place. Would there have been another dragon for him in that clutch, if Kanarath hadn't come his way? He doesn't think so. Perhaps there wouldn't ever have been. Perhaps he and Kanarath had been born for each other after all. But if Larsho had lived only the slightest bit longer, or if Kanarath had been quicker on his feet, the pair of them would have died together. And if he hadn't been there to Impress Kanarath instead, his dragon would have died anyway, unloved and alone. He'll tell H'sal all of it soon. All of what might have been; all of what was. That if Kanarath had died, at least he wouldn't have had to live with a boy who wasn't good enough, a boy who'd resented the intrusion he'd been so desperate to earn, who'd fought and railed and loved and blamed, but who'd eventually learned enough to pull all the pieces together and grow into a dragonman. Kanarath's rider.

Kanarath's.
Never again his own.

He'd learned enough to live. Never enough to forget.

Danisair has never been able to decide whether that's a good thing or not.